


Anyone the One You Love Loves

by annchi



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 21:50:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/423641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annchi/pseuds/annchi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post "Firewall" Reese still hasn't found what he was looking for and desperation makes him seek out an untried source of information in an unlikely place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anyone the One You Love Loves

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt was 'orphans'. Mentions of minor character death, discussion of grief and grieving; spoilers for Season 1 finale; no beta reader.

"My name is John, and I'm living with grief."

If the chorus of 'Hi, Johns' made him feel exposed, it was nothing compared to what happened next, though it wasn't as if he was unprepared for the question. He had only hoped for time to settle in, to be allowed a measure of anonymity for a few minutes longer.

"Who did you lose, John?"

The moderator was a sallow, middle-aged man with an open face, dressed in the modest buttondown and sweatervest combination of off-duty clergy. He didn't offer a bland smile when he spoke, though. That was something. Reese supposed it made the abruptness of such a direct question less offensive.

"I -- two people who were very close to me."

"Members of your family?"

Reese swallowed, throat suddenly dry. 

"Yes."

If they wanted him to elaborate they were in for a long wait. At least this time. If he even decided to come back.

As it was, Reese didn't think he belonged here. Maybe for Jessie -- no, certainly for Jessie -- but he was sure that Finch was still alive somewhere. Even though it had been so long. Weeks. He searched diligently, every day, but without the extended resources and power the Machine offered, still just out of reach, he didn't expect to find a trace of Finch or the woman who called herself Turing. 

Not without help.

"I'm sorry for your loss," the moderator said, and shifted his attention to the man on John's right.

The real reason for his visit to this group was seated off to Reese's left, clear on the other side of the circle. She wasn't looking at him; in fact, he saw no sign that she recognized him at all. That was good. Would make it easier to keep an eye on her. 

Or it wasn't good at all, and her inattention and attendance at the meeting were signs that she was in a bad way.

Well, weren't they all. The moderator went around and people introduced themselves and said who they had lost, some going into much more detail than others. A man lost his wife of fifty years to cancer. A young woman lost her partner and baby in a car accident. 

The litany of loss went on for some time.

He didn't know anything about how Grace had lost Harold. She hadn't said anything other than "there was an accident" when John visited her at home all those weeks ago, and when her turn came up today she said "My fiancé," and left it at that. 

But details didn't really matter here, did they? The loss was overwhelming no matter the person or persons involved. Grief compelled them into this space to face strangers and talk about what they were feeling or face the consequences of inaction the moderator listed: isolation, depression, self-harm, even death.

A few people looked contemplative rather than afraid when the moderator talked about final consequences and John wondered what showed on his own face. If maybe he fit in here, after all, and how badly his cover was compromised because of it.

*

They broke off into pairs and Reese discovered that he'd been wrong about Grace. She did recognize him, made a beeline for him before he could stand and shake the hand of the man sitting next to him, who was supposed to be his partner for the exercise.

"Hey Dave?" she said. "Would you mind if I paired off with John?"

Dave, the man on Reese's right, didn't seem to care. He crossed the room and took up with the partner Grace had abandoned like it was a common occurrence. And it was: people were swapping partners right and left. Literally.

"Hello," Reese said. 

Grace smiled. 

"You don't remember me?"

"No, I do," he said, and feigned the return of a memory. "I met you on a call out. Prank about a disturbance a few weeks ago?"

"That's right. So weird to see you again, and like this."

"Yeah, I remember now. We talked about your fiancé. Harold, right?" Grace nodded and looked down, and Reese felt like the worst kind of liar. "I'm sorry for your loss."

She thanked him and they sat, and went through the exercise, which was about listing the stages of grief and where they were with them. 

Grace was direct and made good eye contact when they talked about his loss, which Reese thought was remarkable given his stumbling performance. He wasn't able to focus on her face for too long when he told her he thought he was closing in on Acceptance about Jessie, but Grace was remarkably blunt and open when it was her turn. Like maybe this was old hat.

"I know you can go back to early stages, or cycle through all of them in an afternoon sometimes," she said. "But I didn't think I'd get hung up on Anger again. I mean, I was mad for a while, but I thought I left it behind, you know?"

Reese knew. "Do you know what triggered it?"

Grace cringed. "Don't take this personally, okay? But after we talked about Harold the other week I got so upset. I thought, how pathetic must I sound to that cop? And then I got angry at Harold for making me pathetic in the first place." She shrugged. "Stupid, I know."

"It's not stupid, and you weren't pathetic," Reese said. "I'm sorry I brought it back."

"No, no," she waved off his apology. "If it hadn't been you, it would have been something else."

He got it, he really did, but decided to hang onto the guilt anyway. It wasn't like he didn't deserve it. Reese was used to lying and pretending to be someone he wasn't; he had done things he wasn't proud of, manipulated people and even killed them for his own ends and the Company's larger goals, but this was the first time in a long time he felt ashamed the way he would have if he had been a real lowlife, down-and-dirty criminal.

"John?"

"Sorry, sorry." He showed her a rueful smile. "Just got lost for a moment there."

She smiled like she understood and continued to talk about what her moods had been like during the weeks since they first met. He found he could relate: lost sleep, general irritation, loneliness, and a low level depression she just couldn't shake. He would have listed the same symptoms himself, with one addition.

"Helplessness," he said at last, and she nodded.

"I felt that way, too, at first. Like if I had done something or changed my schedule, or even called him, kept him on the phone for five minutes." She paused, took a breath, and tried to smile. "But that's all bull, isn't it?"

Reese wanted to say yes, but instead he said, "I don't know," and she put a hand on his knee, squeezed, and pulled back almost before he registered the contact. 

He started to notice that, all around them: the little touches between people. A brief point of contact to show support, a gesture that turned into a lingering press of hands, the hands like pale, nervous animals touching noses. It made him uncomfortable.

"You said you lost two people. Before."

Reese winced. "Yeah, I. My partner, on the force. He's missing. Only recently, and I don't know --" He waved a hand.

"You mean you don't know if he's -- "

"No. Not yet." 

But he _isn't_ dead, and I'll find him, Reese thought. And all at once he was back on task. Never should have allowed himself to lose focus.

He sat back in the folding chair, looked at Grace, and wondered where to begin. 

All around the room, people appeared to be doing exactly what they were doing -- there were nods of understanding, people gave voice to their grief, comforted each other -- and for all Reese knew the stories of how they lost their loved ones were true and there was no hidden, darker story that might be as dangerous to hear as it was to tell. 

Because you never knew who was listening.

Knowledge of the Machine was like a virus, Finch had said, and that made him patient zero. So the question was: if Grace had been exposed by proximity, had she also been infected? 

And if she did know something, would it lead him to Finch?

"We were working this case, a two year old cold case," he said. 

Grace was very still, the picture of patient receptivity. He trained his gaze up, to just above her left shoulder, and let himself focus passively on her face, her left eye, and the reactive pupil therein. 

"This rich guy was killed, Nathan Ingram," he continued, because once he knew where to look, the connection between Ingram and Finch's work on the Machine had been obvious. 

But she gave him nothing, not a twitch: no pupil dilation, no change in respiration that Reese could see. He paused to take a breath just in case she was slow to react.

"And we were following up, going through the background, and my partner disappeared. I think he was kidnapped."

That did get a reaction, a striking contrast to Grace's baseline that contracted her pupils and made her chest heave in sympathy once, twice ... she telegraphed _everything_. It was helpful, and he was going to hell.

"I'm so, so sorry, John. You think it was because of the case?"

"No idea. I just wish I knew -- " He spread his hands and sighed. It wasn't a lie, how helpless he felt. "I wish I knew something for sure."

Grace shook her head. "God, I can't even imagine."

He tried to shrug but it came out all wrong, like a muscle spasm. "Yeah, well. It's part of the job."

They talked for a few more minutes about his job, her work, routines that changed after you lost someone, about New York and how much it had changed in the last decade, and then about more mundane subjects until the moderator called time and told them to reform the circle.

So she hadn't known Ingram. Which made it likely that Ingram hadn't known about her, either. Reese tried to decide what that meant. What kind of man wouldn't tell the person who was, ostensibly, his longest and closest friend about his lover? And if even being near Finch was dangerous, leading him to fake his death and break with Grace, why was he still in touch with Ingram's kid?

Too many questions. 

Reese knew that Finch didn't live like a normal person, and it followed that his relationships would be unusual. But this kind of compartmentalization spoke of some deeply ingrained fear and a level of paranoia that far exceeded Reese's own. He didn't know if he should be impressed or wary. He had seen Finch play characters, adopt throwaway personas with an ease that could only be borne of years of experience, and he admired Finch for it. Harold could go undercover with him any day. But to maintain disparate cover identities for his closest intimates, and to keep it up for _years_? Reese wondered, for the first time, not if he knew the "real" Finch, but if the man even had an authentic self to reveal.

He shuddered, suddenly cold, and Grace tapped his arm. The moderator was talking again. He asked if anyone would like to share their definition of Acceptance. There were a few sighs from the group and the man smiled and told them that they didn't have to be in that stage to understand what it might be like, "Because even if you don't plan to visit that place for a long time, it helps to know something about the geography."

For instance, did Acceptance mean letting go of love for the loved one? There was a chorus of confident 'No's. Did it mean you would never be close to someone in the same way you were close to the person you lost? The group's response to that one was a little more hesitant and Reese looked sidelong at Grace. She was staring at something in the middle distance, twisting a narrow silver bracelet around and around on her wrist.

*

A short time later, after the group broke up and they ascended to the sidewalk, Reese found himself reluctant to lose sight of her. "I'll walk you to the subway," he said, and Grace didn't seem surprised.

She was quiet, though, and Reese couldn't help but feel that the group had done her more harm than good. 

"I'm sorry but, you look more down than you did at the beginning."

She smiled, a little uptick at the corners of her mouth that didn't last. "That happens sometimes. It's supposed to be normal. It's mostly because I'm tired." She shrugged. "I've been sleeping on the couch again."

Reese remembered something she said earlier, about sleeping in the living room when she was overwhelmed by memories in the rest of the house. But in his imagination her house became Finch's Library, where Reese had spent most nights since the other man disappeared, and he had to fight to breathe evenly because it was waiting for him now, dark and empty, on the other side of today. 

"Have you thought about moving," he heard himself ask. She didn't reply and he continued, "A fresh start might help. I know it's none of my business, but --"

But if it had been Jessica in danger, if simply being close to Reese put her life at risk and he had the means and influence that Finch appeared to have, he would have done his best to relocate her to the opposite coast, would have pushed her as far away as he could, not continued to manage her life from the minimum safe distance. 

What had Finch been thinking?

"No. Yes," she said, and smiled bright and false. "I know it's not rational, but staying in the house makes me feel close to our life together and I guess I still need that. Maybe next year I'll sell it, move to New Mexico or, I dunno, California."

They walked without talking for a while and it was almost nice. To be with someone who knew Finch, or some version of Finch who had, once upon a time and a couple years distant, probably done all the normal life, normal people stuff with this woman as his partner. Outdoor concerts, grocery shopping, morning sex, the crossword, laundry ... Reese would have been reluctant to let go of reminders of that kind of life, too. 

Of course, if he'd had more than four days of real happiness with Jessie he wouldn't be here now, and she would be, Jessie might be --

Reese stopped at a cart and got two coffees because, he told Grace, the tea at the support group left a bad taste in his mouth.

"It's true, everything they put in those cups tastes the same, like stale old bread," she said. And then: "Do you think you'll go back, John?"

He honestly didn't know. 

The truth was, he shouldn't, for _her_ sake, for _her_ safety, but for his own? Talking would probably do him some good.

"If you don't come back, go somewhere," she told him. "Talk to someone. It does help."

He nodded and they walked, again in silence, until they got to the subway.

On a whim he pulled a slip of paper from the pocket of his coat, scribbled a number on it, and handed it to her.

"If you ever need anything, anything at all, you can call me. If you don't get me at this number, Detective Carter at the 8th will know how to find me."

"I -- thanks, thank you." 

She looked a little taken aback so Reese raised his eyebrows and smiled into a shrug. "It helps sometimes to know someone on the force. Problems in the neighborhood, another prank, parking tickets, I can help with that sort of thing."

"Oh, right," she said, and the heaviness of the moment dissipated. She tucked his number into a pocket and grinned up at him. "Thanks."

Reese reached out and grasped her shoulder, squeezed for half a second and let go. It was an awkward, not-quite-hug and it made him feel ridiculous. And tired.

"Take care," he said, and fled. 

Because it wouldn't do to linger. Best to get lost in the push and pull of commuters and not look back. She would all but forget about him in a week, maybe two. In the meantime he would continue to learn her schedule and determine the best time to break into her house -- Finch's house -- where he might find some of Finch's things, even some of his history, and that might lead to answers. 

Reese wandered through the steady press of people for almost an hour, then approached a crosswalk and looked up with a grim frown of distaste. He stared long and hard at one of the traffic cameras while he waited for the light to turn green and let his hands drift to his sides where he clenched them into tight, painful fists.

"John? John!" 

It was Grace. She had followed him, had been watching him, and she looked serious, almost distraught.

This, _this_ could be it, he thought. Grace would say she _did_ have a problem, and it had to do with her dead fiancé, and would he help? Or she would tell him about hang-ups or wrong numbers that came late at night, and Carter would go fishing and find a cell number with enough authentic location data to help them track down Caroline Turing.

Something, something, something. She had to have something. He held his breath.

"Don't take this the wrong way," she said, and all at once she was standing very close, "but I think you're still stuck at Anger."

White spots like tiny comets started to obscure Reese's view of her. He tried to tune out everything except her voice, but there was a rushing sound that rose up to meet it and it made his head ache.

"I don't know if it's about your partner or your friend Jessica or both, but you seem really angry, John." She patted his arm and stepped back. "You should talk to someone about it. If you don't like the group, find someone, a therapist, and process it, or you might never move on. _Please_." She smiled a weak, trembling smile. "I just needed to say that. Okay?"

He nodded, thought he might have said "I will" and maybe "thanks," and walked away quickly.

Reese staggered once he was around the next corner, and it was all he could do to stay on his feet when a rush of air escaped his lungs. Of course Grace didn't know anything. Of course not. Finch was too careful for that. He would have broken all ties with her except the insubstantial real-time ones that someone like Reese, who was allowed into one of Finch's carefully segmented worlds, had the patience to uncover.

Damn him, then. Damn the man for making it so difficult. 

Reese put a hand to his face, then shook his head to clear it. Grace was right: his grief and the natural need to move toward acceptance about Jessie shared space with anger, a lot of anger over what had happened to Harold. To _Finch_. But given the choice between the two, he would focus on the anger. Channel it. Let it have free rein. Reese smiled. Anger would serve him best because Finch was alive out there, somewhere, inhabiting a distant, tenuous place between the living and the truly dead, and they were both running short on time.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Kathleen Flenniken's poem, "The Minor Celebrities," which I posted [here](http://annchi.dreamwidth.org/13812.html#cutid1) in my journal.


End file.
